Alderney is the third largest of the
Channel Islands although much smaller then either Guernsey or Jersey being only three miles long and about a
mile wide. It has never enjoyed the popularity as a holiday destination of its
larger cousins which, in their heyday, were served by up to six large
mail-boats from Weymouth and Southampton during the peak summer weeks pouring
tens of thousands of holiday makers onto the islands. In contrast, Alderney has
enjoyed no lasting direct passenger ship link to the British mainland at all.
Before the age of the aeroplane, if you wanted to go to Alderney, you had to go to
Guernsey first and then take the small ferry from there.

It is a quiet, away from it all, sort of
place with a feel about it of stepping back in time. Traditionally, those on the
larger islands refer to Alderney locals as "les vaques" (cows) or "les
lapins" (rabbits).

Only ten miles from the coast of
Britain's then enemy, France, Alderney's strategic position for
sheltering the expanding British Channel Fleet was recognised in the nineteenth
century and so, as part of the general naval dockyard enlargement programme of
the time, which included the huge expansion at Chatham and the enclosing of what
became Portland Harbour, plans were put in hand to build a giant breakwater
around Braye Harbour. You can see it clearly on the left in the
picture above sheltering a small fleet of gunboats around 1900. Facing
straight out into the teeth of Atlantic gales, it was not an easy project to
complete but its significance was demonstrated by Queen Victoria herself coming
over to open it with much ceremony in 1854.

Work on the new breakwater led to a big
expansion in the population of the island and a consequent need for a more
regular ferry connection to Guernsey and Cherbourg. As a result, in 1853, the
Paddle Steamer Queen of the Isles was bought by the breakwater
contractors Jackson and Bean to replace theirsmaller Princess Royal.

After her, the link to Guernsey was provided by the "Little" Courier
(built 1876) and the "Big" Courier, (built 1883 and pictured
above) both being propeller rather than paddle driven.
The latter continued on the route up to 1940.

As the south coast excursion steamer
fleets expanded from the late 1870s onwards, Alderney came to be seen as a potential and
occasional day trip excursion destination having the natural advantage over
Guernsey and Jersey of being the closest island to mainland
Britain so making the trip shorter. Cosens' little PS Empress,
(1878 - 1955)was one of the first to run day trips from Bournemouth
Pier to Alderney.

The Monarch (1888 - 1950) became the most regular of the Cosens' paddle steamers to call at
Alderney up to the First World War, making a handful of trips in the peak summer weeks
each season. Here she is
pictured alongside at Braye Harbour with the giant breakwater in the background.

The same berth
pictured in November 2012. Today it is used for the twice weekly freight
connection to Poole.

The Monarch's rival at
Bournemouth, the very similar Paddle Steamer Bournemouth (1884 - 1886) visited Alderney from time to time but these and all her trips came to
an end in August 1886 when she ran aground and broke her back on the west side
of Portland Bill on a return sailing from Torquay to Bournemouth in thick fog.

In the days before radar and satellite
navigation, fog was always a real worry for paddle steamer captains. The picture
above is of the Paddle Steamer Cynthia (1892 -1933) which Cosens
chartered for the 1899 season. On her scheduled trip to Alderney on 15th August,
she ran into thick fog soon after leaving Weymouth and got only as far as off
the Casquets before her master very
prudently decided not to risk getting mixed up in the fast moving tides and
rocky outcrops of Alderney in fog and turned back.

After the First World War, the cross
channel paddle steamer day trips from the south coast of England to Alderney
became a thing of the past but Alderney itself rejoiced in the acquisition of
its first home based paddle steamer for many a long year when the Alderney Steam
Packet Co bought Cosens' PS Helper (1873 - 1929) in 1919 for their
service connecting Alderney with Guernsey and Sark. Sadly she was damaged in a
gale whilst at Sark in 1926 and was scrapped in 1929.

Just over a decade later, Alderney's fortunes took
a terrible downwards turn. All but a handful of the local population left before the Germans landed in July 1940
after which the process of turning the Channel Islands into a fortress started
in earnest. Although initially
many workers were paid volunteers, it was not long before slave labour was
brought in mainly from Russia and the Ukraine. At its peak there were around
5,000 slave labourers, like the sixteen year old Anton Yezhel, (pictured above)
housed on Alderney in four concentration camps. Many died from starvation,
overwork, disease or cruelty or were executed.

Looking at Alderney today with its
pleasant new locals housed in their pleasant new bungalows, many with pleasant
new greenhouses, it is hard to imagine the sheer horror and terror that existed
on that island little more than sixty years ago. However can it be that at one moment in
time, day trippers from Bournemouth unloaded from the Monarch can amiably
be looking for lunch in a local hotel and touring the island in a charabanc
merry with the laughter of children, and on the very same spot, on the very same
soil, on the very same island, a few decades later, sixteen year old boys can be
imported as slave labourers, subjected to unimaginable cruelty and then shot?

Of course Alderney has tried to put all that
behind it now and move on. Today, it has its modest tourist industry. With its
favourable tax regime it has attracted a number of online businesses including
online gambling. And of course it has a smattering of the well off and the
famous as sometime residents including, rather improbably to my way of thinking,
Julie Andrews. Can it really be that the sugar sweet star of the "Hills are
alive with the sound of music" should live in a pretty little cottage which Anton Yezhel
trudged past, weighed down, as he must have been, by an ebb tide of just about
everything, on his way to the concentration camp?

Well, Alderney may have Julie Andrews
but it doesn't have paddle steamers anymore like the lovely little Helper,
pictured here at St Peter Port, Guernsey in the 1920s.

Today you can get there by plane
directly from Southampton or Gatwick which is all well and good in its own way. But
do we really want all this flying about? Wouldn't it be much nicer if the primary means
of access to Alderney was once again the connection from Guernsey aboard the little Helper ? OK you might need a strong stomach when
a fresh breeze was blowing white horses onto the Channel crests. And you
would have to remember to pack your sou'wester and oilskins if you were planning
to sit on deck. But that's nothing. I would take my chance with all that if only it were possible
once again!

And wouldn't it be wonderful if in
turning back that clock to the 1920s for a Christmas wish for the Helper's
return, that that wish
might include a different future from then on for Alderney. A different future
for Anton Yezhel. A different future which
avoided the dreadful horrors
which scarred its 1940's past.

What we would need is someone with magical
powers to arrange it. But who could do it? Who would have that skill?

But of course! It's obvious when you
think about it: Mary Poppins! Mary Poppins can do anything! And she's a local
girl now........................!